Tell EPA: Plastic is NOT a Renewable Fuel
Tell the EPA: plastic waste is not a renewable fuel. Add your name.>>
"Chemical recycling" is a polluting false solution to our plastic pollution crisis that's being aggressively promoted by Big Plastic to allow the industry to continue to churn out more and more polluting single-use plastics while making it look like they're promoting a "solution".
"Chemical recycling" (also known as “advanced recycling” or "molecular recycling") refers to a suite of processes including pyrolysis and gasification that use high heat and/or chemicals chemicals to turn plastic waste into fossil fuels and other feedstocks that are most often burned.
It's got a lot of names but no matter what you call it, making fuel from plastic is actually worse in many ways for the climate, our environment, and human health than simply burning fossil fuels. For more information, investigative journalist Sharon Lerner's excellent expose in ProPublica highlights the EPA's recent disturbing trend of approving highly polluting "chemical recycling" projects under the Renewable Fuel Program Standard.
Join us in urging the EPA to stop supporting "chemical recycling" and falsely permitting these polluting projects to move forward under the guise of "renewable" fuel sources.. If you have any difficulty accessing the petition form below, please click here to add your name.
We urge you to stop approving projects that attempt to turn plastic waste into fossil fuels, including "chemical recycling", "advanced recycling", "molecular recycling", pyrolysis, and gasification, as part of the agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard Program. Plastics are not a renewable fuel source and there is no question that their production and conversion into fuel releases large amounts of pollution that both accelerates climate change and clearly threatens the health of nearby residents.
Thank you.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT “CHEMICAL RECYCLING”
ProPublica: This “Climate-Friendly” Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk (February 2023)
Inside Climate News: Environmentalists Want the FTC Green Guides to Slam the Door on the ‘Chemical’ Recycling of Plastic Waste (May 2023)
NRDC: Issue Brief - Recycling Lies: “Chemical Recycling” of Plastic Is Just Greenwashing Incineration (September 2022)
Safer States: Legislative Fact Sheet on “Chemical Recycling” (September 2022)
Inside Climate News: A New Plant in Indiana Uses a Process Called ‘Pyrolysis’ to Recycle Plastic Waste. Critics Say It’s Really Just Incineration (September 2022)
GAIA: Legislative Alert - Tracking Trends in Advanced/Chemical “Recycling” (August 2022)
IPEN: Plastic Waste Management Hazards - Waste-to-Energy, Chemical Recycling, and Plastic Fuels (June 2021)
Greenpeace: Deception By The Numbers - American Chemistry Council Claims About Chemical Recycling Investments Fail To Hold Up To Scrutiny (September 2020)